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Independent Healthcare Voices

Independent Healthcare Voices is a platform for healthcare and other industry leaders to share their views, observations and insight on the independent health sector and wider health and social care issues with the aim of sparking debates, spreading learning across the system and sharing solutions to tricky and common challenges facing local services.

Please note that all views expressed are those of the individual author, not of the NHS Confederation.

If you would like to discuss an idea for a blog or submit an article for consideration please email Megan Cleaver at [email protected]

Dr Mark Ratnarajah, UK Managing Director of CRAB Clinical Informatics, looks at how healthcare data is being used around the world to drive improvements in patient outcomes and value for money. Anyone with an eye on healthcare systems in the United States (US), Australia or New Zealand (ANZ) will know that healthcare companies are moving away from fee for service models towards value-based remuneration in recognition of the importance of measuring outcomes rather than process. The shift in emphasis in the...

Ahead of our IHPN summit breakout session on “Safety in hospitals: Building cultures of success", Jodie Sinclair, Head of Employment Immigration and Pensions at Bevan Brittan, looks at the issues surrounding patient safety in the independent sector Driving up standards of safety, clinical governance and accountability rightly continue to be priorities for the healthcare sector. However, with many of the recommendations of the Francis Inquiry still to be fully embedded and the current Bishop of Norwich Inquiry ongoing, it is clear...

Ahead of our IHPN Summit this week, IHPN Policy Director David Furness tells us what we need to know about the health and care integration. The BBC’s superb documentary “Ambulance” is about much more than flashing blue lights. In a recent episode an ambulance crew was dispatched to an elderly couple in distress. The ambulance had been called because the elderly gentleman was complaining of severe pain and his wife was worried. While the crew were there, the true picture of that...

Ahead of our independent Healthcare Provider Network summit breakout session on "The promise of the digital revolution in healthcare", Vincent Buscemi, Partner and Independent Health lead at Bevan Brittan, looks at the issues surrounding digital tech in the health service There’s been an expectation of a digital future in the NHS for many years, but there’s wide acceptance that the sector has been to slow to adopt new technologies and innovation in connected care. Health and Social Care Secretary Matt...

This article was originally published in the HSJ IHPN Chief Executive, David Hare, explores the lessons the NHS needs to retain from the last 10 year plan as it embarks on the new Plans by definition are about the future, and about change and difference. But why do so many plans, including those in the NHS, too often disregard the past and resort to a “Year Zero” approach where the often hard won lessons from previous plans are forgotten? “Progress,...

This article was originally published in National Health Executive Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN) chief executive David Hare discusses the themes covered at his organisation’s Confed18 panel debate on population health management and integrated care. Population health management and integrated care was the key theme at this year’s Confed18 in Manchester, with no fewer than nine events looking at this issue over two days. It’s the issue of the day for the NHS, and there wasn’t a spare seat to...

This article was originally published in the Health Service Journal The NHS needs to be open towards plurality, preserving benefits of a diverse range of independent providers. By David Hare and Jo Pritchard (Social Enterprise UK) A diverse provider market in the NHS is a fact of life (67 per cent of out of hours services delivered by social enterprises; 40 per cent+ community services by non-statutory providers) and as the NHS looks to develop its 10 year plan, these providers...

This article was originally published in the HSJ There has been much made recently over whether the NHS’s shift towards accountable care, and in particular the potential development of accountable care organisations, represents the “privatisation” of NHS services. It is an issue currently being considered by the Commons health select committee as part of their inquiry into integrated care – which provides a welcome opportunity to examine those claims in more detail. But what does the independent sector itself think?...

This article was originally published in the Health Service Journal The exact amount of additional elective activity promised in the recent NHS planning guidance “refresh” has not been spelled out. But, if the demand forecasts are broadly accurate, the NHS is going to need to deliver a few hundred thousand extra elective procedures and a few million extra outpatient attendances over the course of 2018-19. Otherwise, it will not be able to meet the objective of holding the waiting list...

This article was originally published in the Health Service Journal The conveyer belt of NHS acronyms may have been moving more quickly in recent months, with STPs (formerly sustainability and transformation plans) becoming sustainability and transformation partnerships, while accountable care systems (ACSs) emerging as a more approachable alternative to their forerunner, the accountable care organisations. At the heart of each of these acronyms is a new way of delivering NHS care – and on the eve of the NHS’s 70th...